LayerZero's ATLAS Explained: A Headless Exchange Wallets and Trading Apps Plug Into

You're watching Sable Dash Live, the modern money show. We got Simon coming in for a second appearance here on the show. Simon, it's good to see you again. Wow. Welcome back. Life. Yeah.

Likewise. Good to be back. Appreciate

really happened since you were last on. Nothing's really been going on. Not much to update. Be quiet. Especially Yeah. It's like it's like some boring in this time of industry we're in, aren't we? Yeah. It's kind of awkward. Yeah. Just kidding. There's so much to talk about. I love well, I'm excited to dive into your point of view on on all of this stuff. Zach, I'll let you kind of frame this.

I know that we have so much we could kind of go into here, but I'll I'll shoot it to you to see what what you wanna start with.

Yeah. Well, no. I know the I know the big big announcement was Atlas. And also, think in the time since we last had you on zero launch was your blockchain. So kind of kind of give us the t o d r, like, if none nobody's heard of Atlas or if they've maybe heard it, but they don't really understand the impact, maybe frame that, a little bit for us. And, like, what is Atlas? What what does it do? And we'll kinda start to unpack it from there.

Yeah. A 100%. I think the last time I was on, we very briefly. We'd probably just announced zero, which is we announced it on February 10 as sort of the next evolution of layer zero and kind of the next thing that we're betting on and building. Since then, we've actually been intentionally quiet about what we were actually building on top of Xero. So we announced Xero as sort of the underlying, incredibly performant layer one architecture.

But one of the things that we didn't want to do was launch sort of just another general purpose environment, right, like have this open foundation and let the world build on it. We were much more interested in building up the stack and really building things that take advantage of the unique architecture and the unique performance that Xero has, hence Atlas, which is the first purpose built stack on top of Xero.

It stands for aggregated trading liquidity and settlement system, so a full end to end on chain stack for risk, credit, matching engine, clearing, and settlement all in one powered by zero on the underlying. And you can really think of it as a headless on chain exchange layer. And we'll get into oh, exactly this.

We're on it today. We're on it.

It. You're you're always on it, not just today. You can really think of it as a headless exchange layer. And what I mean by headless is we intentionally do not have our own trading front end. We want to be credibly neutral exchange infrastructure across both open markets and institutional markets for spot, for perps, for futures options across all asset classes. So that's equities, that's commodities, that's crypto, etcetera.

The the idea is for trading venues and trading platforms to plug into this system and distribute that to either their retail investors or institutional investors to get, the benefits of the on chain stack to get access to tokenized trading, and really sort of the best performance, execution, and liquidity in in the world. So that is, like, what this engine is.

We talked a lot about our interoperability business on the first show, and that is sort of what we call the, you know, the permissionless money, you know, stable dash. Right? Like, we've really captured that, that momentum over the past five years of of permissionless money and stable coins that are entered into operability business powers, the majority of stable coins today. We view this trend happening right now as permissionless markets. Right?

There's plenty of proof in the industry that permissionless markets are here to say, and Atlas is meant to capitalize on that and really, and and is really built for that.

So I'm at five degrees. So do you thinking about We will get excited. Wants to go. Alright. Let's do it. On shoot. Ready? Oh, wait. Paper, scissors. Shoot. Damn it. Let's go again. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Damn it. Okay. You you take it. Take it. Take it. Alright. I was I was wondering if you saw Braille's that was the first first of the show ever, Rock, Paper, Scissors.

You saw Braille like, when I'm thinking about this, I my mind, as you were describing this, I go directly a little bit to what Braille released with their ION protocol, like cross chain liquidity for everyone. Their approach with this is is obviously very like issuance first and, like, mint your stablecoin and, like, going after issuers and companies in that world. Like, one, are you familiar with what they launched there?

And I'm curious how you might think of what ION Protocol and Braille are doing that might be similar or different to Atlas and and some of this? Because it it seems it seems related, but I'm sure there are, like, very key differences. Did you see that launch first from them? Yeah.

Love Ben. Love the Braille team. We work with them very closely. We've we've been partnered on the interoperability side of their stablecoin business for quite some time. They run a DBN. Some of their stablecoins like SCB and others run on layer zero interoperability. So certainly familiar with the team and certainly familiar with their launch. And in fact, would say that product is more related to our interoperability business than it is to Atlas.

So on the interop side, this is sort of their way of tackling cross chain liquidity, especially for the stablecoins that they have because they have many stablecoin programs. Right? They're sort of like small, medium business type stablecoins that they run for many folks. Atlas is not that. Right? Atlas is not sort of cross chain stablecoin liquidity. It is a full end to end trading engine. Right?

So when we talk about tokenized equities, when you talk about perpetuals, when you talk about on chain collateral, etcetera, that is what this system is built for. So where I would, you know, maybe draw the comparison is think of NICI, for example, and putting all of NICI on chain. Right? And the entire stack, not just the trading piece and the matching engine, but also clearing settlements, etcetera. That is what Atlas is built for.

Would Hyperliquid and builder codes be probably the the more more relevant comparison if we were to think about this?

Probably a more relevant comparison. Yeah. There's some architectural differences and I would probably draw that comparison closer to since we have two sides of of the coin there to the open Atlas side. On the regulated side, there's really nothing so far in the market that compares there.

But but, yes, that would be a much closer analogy for sure. Yeah. I'm just and I think what what what really comes to mind for me is we had Alvin on from, Bitget Wallet, and he had this he had this quote, and he said, people may not bank where they trade, but they'll trade where they bank. So when we think about this being a headless exchange and being integrated into the neo banks or the banking institutions of the world, how do you really see this product start to come to life?

And do you have any comments maybe on that quote when we think about, alright. Atlas is here. Now what? You know, who who's gonna build on top of this headless exchange? Who's this for?

Yeah. I think that's a great quote. I actually I actually would agree with it. Right? Because, like, where wherever your money already sits, you are much more willing to spend it. Right? Like, when I go into my Robinhood account, and and and and there's money in there and I have to make, you know, the prediction market bet for $20. It's just, like, automatic. Right? The balance is there.

It's a it's a larger balance than it would be in sort of a standalone app, right, because that's that's where I, you know, keep a a large portion of my money. And and so you you do perform the trade there, perform some sort of action with that balance. It was just flashed up there. Some of the some of the earliest trading platforms that we announced, you know, was GTE, bullish, true north, and and and a couple others.

So how we're thinking about it is the platforms with a retail user base, platforms that have folks that maybe have balances. So think of, you know, the top wallets like MetaMask and Phantom, some of the biggest drivers of perpetual retail volume today, that is where we see this going. And the benefit of it being headless is in the alternative case, the preference is always towards the first party front end. Right?

Like the trading platform that is first party will usually have the best economics and and other things that can be offered. And so if you are a partner trading platform or a third party trading platform integrating something like filter codes, you are more often than not going to ultimately get routed by the sophisticated trader to go to the first party front end because the economics are gonna be better there.

So that is sort of the concept of being headless and being incredibly neutral is the economics will be the same everywhere, and there's no way to sort of go about that in order to to to get something better directly through us.

Yeah. When we think about, like maybe maybe simple question, but getting more and more intricate, like, as the markets develop, like, what do people wanna trade? Like, what do people wanna trade on the on on the exchange? I think especially, like, the advent of, like, perps, you're seeing Hyperliquid making this push into The US with the pay word. We're seeing, you know, obviously, prediction markets.

I've even thought about, like, what is the, like, what is the difference of, like, going long Bitcoin versus, like, going on Kalshi and just saying, I think Bitcoin's gonna reach a 100 k by, you know, January 1. Like, how do you think about building these trading experiences? What assets do people wanna trade? Where do you focus there, especially in the context of, you know, liquidity? How do you think about these markets developing?

Yeah. I think people wanna trade three things. Right? So one is things that are simple, which perpetuals are simple. Like, they're just simple to trade. Right? You bet on the price and and and and go from there. People wanna trade upside that is more than sort of your, you know, your basic five to 10%. Right? And so you're seeing things like know, the meme coins on Robinhood chain.

You're seeing platforms like FOMO, who, you know, who we're very close partners to, etcetera, really, capitalize on this this meme coin trading, trend because the upside is so high there, right? And then the third thing I think is things that are harder to access, right? So for example, pre IPO companies, right, or certain funds that can be put on chain and accessed in a particular area where it's not accessible to everyone else. I think it's like those three things, right?

It's simplicity, it's upside, and it's ultimately unique access, all three things of which we are providing on top of Atlas, right? So we are building perpetuals on Atlas. We are building a variety of sort of high upside markets on Atlas, and we're absolutely building the third as well.

How have you seen, just from your perspective, the idea of we're we're next month or I guess this month, it's already September. Goodness. We're gonna be launching a series really focused on modern markets and really diving into more of the nuances here. This this conversation almost feels like what would be a great, like, part of that. No. 100%. I think what was saying was crafting it. Yeah.

What Simon, for you, like, even now, I I go to my Coinbase account, I open it, and the way that they're even positioning Bitcoin markets is, like, you know, I'm getting hit with this, like, fifteen minute window or, like, countdown window where the it almost is starting to feel like bet on what the price of Bitcoin will do in the next, like, two minutes, and it it feels very, very different now in terms of how real time and how these markets are are moving into extremely different like like, betting or trying to predict the price of Bitcoin in the next three minutes and the band that that will fall into is a very different behavior than I'm gonna put like a spot position, like a long spot position for, you know, years and years ahead of time.

How have you seen that's just one example, but how have you seen markets evolve from your perspective in the last, like, even six to twelve months? I feel like we're going into a really interesting moment with markets and how people are engaging with them.

Yeah. I would agree. I think that answer is probably again, it is very intentional that we're sort of straddling both these kind of open markets and institutional markets. Right? I think on the open market side, and that's really just retail, frankly. Right? Permissionless retail, or sort of, you know, permissionless kind of self custody focused whales, etcetera.

I think on on that side, it is moving to sort of just like more and more instant gratification, right, like it's like how do I make as much money as possible in a short period of time? People are becoming price, I'd say, insensitive to sort of, like, the cost of the trade and everything. Right? Because it is really like Brian, our our founder, when we first launched zero had this whole sort of article that he put out. Is it like a global casino and is is isn't enough? But, like, that is what that side kind of is.

Right? Like, it is a casino. Like, everyone is just, like, here to make money quickly. I think on the institutional side, it's very different. Right? And and the institutional side and the reason that we built Atlas for the institutional side and sort of this end to end stack is because one thing that is that has been proven, especially with perpetuals, you look at hundreds of billions of dollars of monthly volume today, the margins on that entire trade are much, much higher. Right?

So for so, like, if if you think about institutional trading venues today, IC, LSEG, etcetera, they're actually not trading businesses. Right? They are data businesses because commercials are far better on the data side and of of price discovery, etcetera, than it is on the actual trade, which they have to slice in so many different ways with so many different participants and clearing facilities and settlement facilities, etcetera.

With on chain perpetuals, all of that gets collapsed into a much, much higher margin. And so the reason I say that is I think to the question of like how has it evolved, I think it's evolving on the institutional side where many folks are trying to figure out how to capitalize on more of that margin.

On chain allows you to do that, which is then also evolving into this interesting scenario where, institutions that traditionally work with each other are starting to think about how to cut each other out and go around them, in order to capitalize on more of that margin and really become trading businesses.

So it's a very interesting I think, like, the next six to eighteen months will be incredibly interesting to see how, clarity goes, to see how, all of capital markets sort of positions itself, how the CFTC thinks about this. And I think there's just a lot of changes coming to, to that part of the next, again, six to eighteen months.

Simon, if you had to, like, sum up a call call to builder, like, hey. We have this headless exchanges here. We have this product. This is what I if if I weren't doing my job right now at LayerZero, this is what I would do. What what would that thing be? Like, what is that called at builders that, like, this is what you would want to do with the technology? Maybe somebody's already doing it, but, like, let's think big here.

What what is that next evolution of a trading experience that you wanna see built on top of of Atlas?

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot of exchanges. There's a lot of trading platforms. There's lot of trading terminals. Reality of it is, like, a lot of them look the same. Like, if you really you know I mean? Like, all of them look exact. Like, trading terminals today, no matter what exchange you go to, they all look exactly the same. Yeah. And so I think, you know, where which which by the way, a trading terminal in itself

is fairly intimidating, I think, to just like the regular Joe show up the street. Very. I don't know if I wanna touch this rate. It's like go walk it's like peeking in when you walk into a plane, like the cockpit of a of a pilot's view. You're like, oh god. Like, I would never wanna fly this thing.

Correct. Which is, frankly, I think why prediction markets have been so successful. Right? Because they're not intimidating. It's just like, no, that's it. And so I think for for all of these asset classes, like, what I would love to see and if I wasn't doing this, like, I would take advantage of this technology and and and build sort of a new gen trading experience for people that that can get and understand these asset classes, what they mean, how to trade them, etcetera.

Like, you know, probably not not many people are sort of regular people are trading the VIX, for example. But they should. They absolutely could if they under like, understood what it was. And so I think there's just, like, such a level of education that's necessary. And so, like, the the next gen trading platform, I think, will be that. Right? Maybe that's just, like, typing something in and and into into a chatbot that says, hey. I have a $100, and I wanna bet on this asset class or invest in this asset class.

Like, give me the options, and it just executes that trade maybe on list, but sort of simplifying that entire trading experience. I think there's a lot of work to be done there.

This reminds me a lot, Drew, of what Maez was just talking about kind of with kudos and going through a questionnaire to maybe understand maybe what you believe about the world, positions you currently hold to maybe guide that experience into maybe assets that you didn't know you can invest in, kind of like you said, that you might you might want to. I didn't think about last night. I was doing some maintenance on my daughter's 05/29 plan, and I opened up Trump accounts for her.

Trump accounts was actually a really delightful experience. Like, it was amazingly easy. On the other hand, managing her ScholarShare account and trying to figure out, like, like, what are these different portfolios, was horrible. It was like I was working in, like, the nineties.

And granted, that's just for five twenty nine plans, but I think that that says a lot about especially if you're a young parent or you wanna build these experiences, like, how easy it is it to get educated about what you're actually investing in?

Yeah. Think about, like, you when you're setting up your, like, four zero one k Vanguard and and, like, picking the funds. Like, how how can you possibly understand, like, What what is actually the

is that specifically if you were building this, like, you know, let's just imagine layer zero is, alright, Simon, we're seed we're leading your seed round. Go build whatever you want. You have to go do this tomorrow. Like, how would you actually go design a superior experience? Like, what would that look like? It's it sounds like it's not gonna look and feel maybe like a traditional the way that a traditional terminal dashboard looks and feels.

Like, how would you and it sounds like from my earlier comments, you really do see a difference, obviously, between retail versus institutions, how you build and position products, and how LayerZero serves both differently. How maybe for the institutional use case specifically, like, how would you build something new and different for for that that Trader Trader use case?

Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is now becoming, you know, my my pitch to raise around and and go and go build something. Could be. But, look, I I I don't know. I've always been just a a very big fan of user experience. I think it matters so much. And, like, we all kinda say it, but I think, you know, like, amazing examples of that are, like, in in my head, you know, like, Robinhood is one of those applications that has an amazing user experience. It's an application that, like, I wanna spend time in.

I feel the same way, for example, Spotify. Yes. I just I just love being on Spotify. Like, I I want to be there. I wanna go discover things. Like, I'm not closing the app as soon as I, like, get what I want. I actually spend time there. And so I think, that is in in maybe the highest level of terms where I would spend probably the majority of the time is just creating a user experience where you just really want to be, exist, etcetera, and then kind of build everything downstream from there.

Because you got the capability of trading, getting, you know, getting access to to these different asset classes, etcetera. Like, you can get that in a lot of different places, but how it's delivered is is I think the the the thing that, I would really focus on.

I've I've always felt that way with Spotify. I don't know what it is, but it just feels so personal. Like, it feels like you're you have someone that knows you deeply that you wanna be around.

I love the new, like, tracks. You'll be on a playlist. You'll be like, do you want more discovery tracks? Do you want more like this? And it's kind of again, it's taking something that's very familiar that we know, but also making it feel new and kind of ever evolving and, like, fighting against being stagnant.

Curation is actually really it's a similar I mean, I don't actually think comparing Spotify to a modern trading experience is that far off. Like you said, it's all data, it's all curation, and it's decision making. Like, the the same decision of what song or album am I going to listen to and how that decision gets made is a curated experience, and it's a very similar potentially similar design choice to what portfolio,

what stock, what index Well, think about I I think about what Simon said earlier with, like, you know, private markets, and we think, know, there's an upcoming anthropic IPO. You know, imagine you're going through a trading experience and you've gone and done your questionnaire, and maybe it can see your current portfolio. Maybe it sees the stuff you like on x, and it sees, hey. You seem to be really interested, like, in this AI trend. The IPO's upcoming. Consider positioning yourself here.

Or, you know, who knows what other company is gonna, you know, be raising around if we're talking about private markets or, you know, the the kind of possibilities are endless, but how do you how do you get those right opportunities in front of the the right investor and and start to play matchmaker and curate that? Because, I mean, we're in this space right now. It's it's hard to keep track of everything going on, and we're in this one little niche of of finance, let alone the everything else.

Yeah. I mean, look, guys. If this, StableDash thing doesn't work out, give me a call. Maybe we'll maybe we'll fill this. We'll

We'll it. We'll build We'll We'll We're asking a lot of selfish questions here. Last last one for me before we part.

You know, you mentioned you mentioned this earlier of the all of these different changes that are happening with maybe parsh partially with regulation, what is now possible with the tech, and it sounds like there's displacement going on or, like, new categories that are opening up for like, what what sounds like these silos that that people have existed in and been trapped in are now getting kind of opened up. And I would love to better understand what you meant by that.

Like, what what are maybe some use cases or, like, things that you're seeing where companies can now own more of the stack? Or, like, what what did you mean when you were saying that? What does that practically look like?

Yeah. So I think that's large for the for the institutional side. Right? But I think in sort of the, you know, again, the the the traditional finance world, there are so many different companies that play so many different roles in order for sort of an end to end trades to happen. Right? What I think on chain allows to do, what perpetual is allowed to do, what the stack that we built with with Atlas allows you to do is really bring all of that into sort of one on chain stack. Right?

So when we say, like, credit risk matching clearing settlement, like, all of that is an end to end stack on Atlas that's built. And so for for a trade that that happens, you're you're executing that all on on zero on Atlas. Right? You're not plugging and playing different solutions or different participants in order to make that happen. So I think, like, that is that is the benefit of this technology that we built, is that it's complete sort of end to end capital market stack on chain.

So cool. Zach, any final any final ones from you?

I'm gonna bite my tongue, but this is great, Simon. Thanks for coming on today.

I know we didn't get to your your Allium dashboard. Maybe we can pop this up really quickly because I know that that was something you wanted to discuss. Anything on this that sticks out? You got 10,000,000,000 USD volume. Any any any callouts here that you wanted to go through real quick?

Yeah. Look, mean, I I think, like, there have been especially with with with Atlas and, you know, all these new announcements that we're making, I think, yeah, there's been a lot of questions on, like, you know, so where is the interoperability business of LayerZero and, like, how is that going and where is it heading? And I think, you know, it's all the Atlas and Xero things that we're doing are incredibly exciting, but the interoperability business is stronger than ever.

You know, if if you look at some of the numbers, right, $10,000,000,000 in the last in the last thirty days, that's roughly 88% market share, I guess, 9.73% market share in terms of all volume transferred cost chain. And so that is just a business that we continue to expand on, and it and it's going really well. Like, when you look at volume, you're looking at USD volume transfer. So you see some of the numbers here, right, in terms of, we're we're the green.

Everyone else is is is is the much smaller blue, purple, and beyond. And then kind of messages sent as well, right, between public chains. And so this is where we continue to focus, continue to expand, productize on top, really mature that business. We have a real a lot of really exciting announcements coming in the next few weeks in terms of some of the world's biggest new biggest stablecoins in the world coming to layer zero.

So just wanted to sort of, you know, I think there's what I may call some foul play in the market and some headlines that may be a little bit misleading I've seen, but the interoperability business is very strong and we continue to to focus there. So I thought it might be worth highlighting.

That's great. And Allium Allium is definitely not going to build dashboards that aren't completely accurate. I know that that that I mean, one of the most trusted teams when it comes to data and putting this stuff together. So this is really impressive. I mean, it's it's fairly obvious the the how how much layer zero is dominating in these in these specific events.

What what would you attribute that level of leadership or just, like, when you're looking at a chart like this, USD volume by protocol, as we kind of sign off here, like, what what would you say is to what what where is this momentum and success and continued dominance coming from? Like, what do you got what have you guys gotten right that's to to thank for this?

Yeah. I mean, you know, we've always been a very engineering first company and so I think the the tech speaks for itself. But I think the other thing that we spend so much time on is really going incredibly deep with the partners and customers that we have. Right? And so when you talk Tether, when you talk Athena, when you talk PayPal, etcetera, like some of these things that are, you know, the largest stablecoins in the world and the largest sort of volume drivers of of of of chain activity.

These are companies that we worked with for years, right, with for years and kind of hand in hand, you know, co build stuff with them and help them expand and sort of like help them with their go to market and really, you know, distribute their presence across these different blockchains, across these different user bases and ecosystems.

And so I think outside of, you know, building great tech and doing this, living and breathing it every single day for the past five years, it's really just partnering really, really closely and making sort of their business and their success our business and our success. And I think that is, like, what you see today with with with the volumes that we power and the sort of the customer and partners that we have.

Yeah. And what is maybe last question. What is the we haven't obviously, as close as you have been following the discourse or timeline related information and what is right and what is wrong. Like, what what are you seeing as the maybe misunderstanding or misrepresentation? Like, what does that mean, and how would you redefine what true what what is true about about this?

Yeah. I mean, I I think sort of like the the misunderstanding and probably the perception that, like, a few headlines have been create that that have created is, like, you know, certain amounts of of TBL or customers sort of leaving LayerZero, right, in the past three to four months. And those headlines are just not very factual. You know, we always take the high road and we are focused on the long term and really working with our partners and customers.

And I think, like, the proof is in the pudding, which is objective data. And, you know, our market share has frankly increased over the past six months from 80 ish percent, as you saw, 89% on volume share of USD transferred. And so I think sort of like that some of the headlines that are paid for are not factual or describing reality. And so I think, you know, I always like to anchor it back down into the numbers and what's actually happening.

And that is, you know, 89% market share and moving the majority of the world's assets and dollars crushing.

Yeah. Yeah. Paid for headlines always even starting with headlines that are paid for, that can always kinda get you into muddy waters

is is very, very sensitive subject for me. Even though we would love LayerZero to pay us to sponsor the show, I wouldn't be against that. Sponsorships are different than paid media. There's an there's editorial independence that you always have to retain. How wouldn't you upset with that? True for us. I do not like, people have asked us, like, how much is it to come on the show? I'm like, it's it's not pay to play here. That's not the game I'd I personally ever wanna be in.

We wanna cover what needs to be covered to move the space forward. So, we appreciate you coming on today, Simon, and, thank thank you for allowing us to be a part of the the Layer Zero story.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure, and, nice to see you guys crush this. And, you know, I feel like I see StableDash more and more on on my thesis. For y'all.

Well, you'll see more and more, and you'll see some Layer Zero over the next few days. So make sure to do all the fun stuff. Like, comment, retweet, and, keep it we'll keep it going.

Making it rain zero as you leave. Thanks, Simon. Awesome. See you, Simon. Love it. Thanks, guys. Cheers.